


Tovarisch

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Russian 2013 series), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic, Unreliable Narrator, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They spend most of their time fighting, it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tovarisch

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2015 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #15, _**That Old Saying**_ _. The old Egyptian saying "_ ابن الوزّ عوّام _. (ibn il-wazz 3awwam.)  ("The son of a goose is a swimmer.") is roughly the same sentiment as the English "Like father, like son." Whether it's one of these statements or another adage, include some classic saying in today's entry. Bonus points if you also manage to include a goose!_ The 2013 Russian Sherlock Holmes films can be seen [on YouTube here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzwBIvVwuOg&list=PLTdpJpQ5RUKbtZysOJnhr53TOUehIdM45) – and the entire series is based on the premise that John Watson is the biggest liar in England.

Watson was learning – through painful experience – what his strange friend and flatmate would and would not endure from him. Getting flattened in three moves during a boxing exercise, or cold-cocked to keep him out of a ring with a bruiser? Not an issue. Following him barefoot through the mud on their very first case together? Charming. Scaring him into thinking he’d gotten shot while dealing with an affair of honor at a soldier’s club? Endurable. But embellishing his stories with exaggerations about Holmes’ behavior and characteristics at his agent’s request to make them more saleable? Unforgiveable – judging from the enraged shouting Holmes was doing up the stairs at him.

This, of course, was nothing compared to the furious berating Mrs. Hudson gave him for altering her own age, appearance and character. How could he explain that a motherly (read: elderly) housekeeper would be more morally acceptable to readers than for them to know that she was in fact a young widow who was actively courting him? That would only send her off into another frenzy of dire predictions from her beloved horoscope.

He let none of this prevent him from confronting Sherlock over the man’s actions, especially where it concerned Irene; he was an old soldier, and he called a whore a whore. That Sherlock’s first reaction to his candour was to slap his face only proved that the man was not letting rationality guide his actions. (This did not prevent him from feeling a great satisfaction in once again pummeling the man in a sparring session when he finally showed his face at Baker Street.) But that thrashing seemed to have jolted the man’s brain enough to come up with an answer that would save the abducted woman and prevent the war that would result if they gave her captor the intelligence he wished.

To his great relief, he discovered that Holmes did not hold grudges against his hot-tempered flat-mate – his own angers blew over as quickly as they came. The two men once again shared a glass in exhausted triumph at a case’s end, laughed at a little joke between them – and Holmes even came up with a solution to his dislike for publicity by ordering Watson to describe him in future as resembling the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard (a prepossessingly tall fellow, clean-shaven, wearing an Inverness overcoat, smoking a calabash pipe and inexplicably topped by a deerstalker – very different from Watson's short, unshaven and bespectacled partner).

Alas, Mrs. Hudson was not as forgiving as Sherlock Holmes. Watson had smelled the goose she was roasting all the way up to their rooms and his mouth watered – only to find a bowl of porridge thumped down in front of his chair even as Holmes was presented with a platter of the best slices off the bird. Her fiery eyes dared him to raise a single objection.

Watson was a soldier but he also knew when to surrender. He smiled and thanked his landlady for supper, and took up his spoon even as his oblivious flatmate tucked into the succulent meat, mind and attention focused on the latest intelligence on this mysterious Moriarty.

**\- Враг будет согласен, товарищ будет спорить** _(An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue. – Russian proverb)_


End file.
